Israeli Prof. Compares Israeli State to Apartheid South Africa

Tweet Q: When you began to study this, I mean, what conclusions did you come to about, about the state of Israel and the situation of the Palestinians?

I think what came out is something which I think many, many Palestinians before me realized, but for me it took this individual journey into the past to understand that. I was taught as an Israeli academic that there is a very complex story there, and in fact what you find out is that this is a very simple story, a story of dispossession, of colonization, of occupation, of expulsion. And the more I go into it, the clearer the story becomes, even it becomes simpler, and it also brought me to think of the state of Israel, and the Jewish majority in it, in very much the same terms that I used to think about places such as South Africa, and the white supremacy regime there. So I think this is the natural, main conclusion.

Extremely interesting article explaining things like why there is no Jewish working class opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Also, about the US left's support of the two-state solution, Pappe says this:

Q: The supporters of Israel, left supporters of Israel, basically say that the two-state solution is the only real possibility for Israel, and that's why they push its support in the US. What is your answer to that?

I can see a support for a two-state solution emerging, immediately after the Six-Day war, when Israel did not yet annex the East Jerusalem, did not yet build one Jewish settlement in it. There was a lot of logic of saying that despite, despite the fact that it is only 20% of Palestine could be a basis for a Palestinian state, next to Israel, and that these two states, in the future, would develop in such a way that they might turn it into one state, and even find a way of solving the refugees problem. But this is all water under the bridge.

In 2005, with the number of Jewish settlements, with the Greater Jerusalem becoming one third of the West Bank, and the local, and global, and regional balances of power, I think a two-state solution can only become an indirect way for continuing the Occupation. And as I said before, if we understand that the diplomatic effort has deepened the Occupation, has not brought an end to it, so in the case of the two-state solution we have to liberate ourselves from that paradigm. It can only help the Occupation and the Zionist colonization, and only the beginning of ideas of one-state solution can create a different future there.

Pappe also calls the US media coverage of Israel Palestine "childish," and an "insult to intelligence."